


Acrophobia

by owlaholic68



Series: New Vegas Blues [7]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Acrophobia, Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, Fear of Heights, Gen, Lonesome Road DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 23:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14964008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: Courier Lynn is afraid of heights. This complicates things in the Divide.





	Acrophobia

There are not very many high places in the Mojave. Lynn can think of a few off the top of her head, but that’s it:

The Helios One Control Tower. She remembers how the rusted railing cut into her hands and stained them a dusty red, Boone a solid but unsympathetic presence at her back.

The Lucky 38. Approaching the windows in House’s penthouse and recoiling, stuttering out something meaningless before turning tail and steadfastly refusing to look at anything but the oversize monitor.

Guardian Peak. Crossing a wobbling bridge step by agonizing step, Veronica at her side worriedly holding her hand. Feeling an immense relief once she finally got to the top, refusing to look down at Lake Mead and the dizzyingly distant fires of Caesar’s camp across the water.

But none of that compares to being up here on the High Road.

At first, the light hurts her eyes too much to realize where she is, the darkness from the tunnel making her wince and shade her eyes, the setting sun’s glare stabbing through her glasses. As her eyes adjust to the sudden daylight, Ulysses speaks to her again, though she’s barely listening, because she’s moved out of the tunnel entrance and further into the light, and what she sees stops her.

There’s a reason this is called the High Road, and it’s not just symbolic. The sides of the overpass fall away in crumbling blocks of concrete, the ground far below. Lynn’s feet stop responding to her wishes, and they only propel her backwards and away from the edge.

ED-E beeps, worried. Lynn gives him an unsure nod, then startles as a flash of movement on the road ahead draws her attention. Enemies. Two Marked Men, and one other one that seems bigger and different, a grisly mask hiding their face.

Something to distract her from the deathtrap she’s standing on. Lynn crouches and immediately feels safer closer to the concrete that she can almost pretend is solid ground. She unshoulders her rifle and peers down the scope. Holding her breath is hard when all she wants to do is hyperventilate and go back down into the perilous tunnels, but she manages to steady herself.

A shot to the chest, then the head, then another head, and the Marked Men finally realize they’re being attacked. ED-E darts out to distract and shoot, and Lynn takes the last Man down. With shaking knees, she stands and walks over to loot the bodies and use the Commissary terminal on the truck behind them.

But it’s time to move on. She can’t stay in the comforting shadow of this truck any longer. She pulls herself to the roof of the truck and refuses to look to either side where the highway falls away. Through the scope of her trusty rifle, she spies a Deathclaw. Could this path get any worse?

It could. It’s not only enemies that plague her journey. She’s fought Deathclaws. She’s fought Marked Men. But she’s never had to cross a terrifying gap with only a scrap of wood under her feet. This overpass has seen better days.

She takes one step onto the makeshift bridge and she just can’t take another. It’s too high up, she can see through the gap in the concrete down to the ground below. She’s going to lose her balance and fall, the wood is going to break under her feet, she can’t go on, she can’t-

But ED-E is there. He beeps and floats to her side, putting his metallic body under her hand and raising so her arm is outstretched like a dancer on a tightrope. It’s a lifeline that she clings to as she slowly crosses the gap. As soon as her boots touch the concrete again, she almost collapses from relief. This overpass is still terrible, but at least the intact parts are safer.

The sun is setting. She can’t go on like this in the dark, not knowing if she’s going to step into a hole or step off the edge. In front of her is a huge pile of rubble and a warhead. Lynn crouches behind a large sign proclaiming ‘HOSPITAL’ and sets down her rifle in favor of the laser detonator. As she aims, something catches her eye above her in one of the buildings half-collapsed over the road.

A flash of movement. With her sniper training ringing in her ears, Lynn moves slowly to pick up her rifle and swing the barrel over to where she saw it. A man is staring down at her. From this distance, she can’t see his face, only his silhouette. He must notice her observation, because he turns and walks back into the building.

Ulysses?

He’s gone now, but the warhead and the enemies in front of her remain. She detonates the warhead and gasps at the rumble and creak of the centuries-old structure under her feet. But it holds. For now.

Dark has almost fallen. She needs to find a place to hole up for the night, and quickly. Right now, there only seems to be one option: up. Arrows on one of the collapsed buildings point her up, and up, and up, and she follows with her heart pounding an erratic rhythm in her throat.

More charges, more explosions that rock the latticework wall she’s climbing. Thinking takes a backseat to just getting up, to getting onto something that won’t fall away under her.

The Crow’s Nest. A sniper post, once, she can tell. Ironic, that a sniper such as her would have issues with heights. But most of her improvised posts have been secure, stable. This one seems to shake with every gust of wind, seems to sway like a cradle. But it’s secure. She vaguely knows this through the haze of barely-restrained panic.

With the last ribbons of red sunlight streaming away off the horizon, Lynn curls up on the bedroll and sets her glasses next to her. It’s a little better, not being able to see the drop below.

“ED-E, play me a log, please. Thirty-percent volume.”

He beeps and Whitley’s voice murmurs in her ears. “Experiment log 369248/b, eyebot duraframe universal interface override system, this is doctor Whitley presiding…”

* * *

It never gets better. If anything, it gets worse.

On the roof of Sunstone Tower, with no ED-E to steady and comfort.

Scrambling onto the second floor of the Third Street Municipal Building with the metal wreckage groaning and creaking under her, the ruined carpet under her knees not a comfort, because she can still see the cracks in the floor.

Climbing up the cliff to Ulysses’ Temple, hoping every moment that this will all be over soon, and she can just turn back and stay on solid ground from now on. And then it is over, and she’s fine, and nothing’s fallen out from under her. Yet.

* * *

She finds Ulysses, later. The Divide from the entrance to the Hopeville Silo looks different now, darker. She knows what’s out there, and she knows that she never wants to ever face it again.

“Courier.” Ulysses turns at her approach. He’s sitting on a rock with his feet dangling off the edge. “Come sit.” At her hesitance, he turns with a frown. “Time for fighting’s long past us. Now it’s just the watching, the aftermath. Nothing to fear from me, Courier.”

“You misunderstand my reluctance,” she answers, her voice sounding distant and tight. She hadn’t had a problem with this approach the first time, too curious and too unheeding of the danger that awaited her down below. “It’s not you. It-it’s not you.”

One step closer to the edge, then another. Her hands shake. She’s three, maybe four steps behind Ulysses when she stops. She sits, but it’s more of a collapse. Staring at her knees is better than looking at Ulysses, at the too-deep expanse behind him. Her face burns.

“I see.” He scoots backwards until he’s sitting next to her instead. “Of all the things to halt your path, never expected a fear of heights.” He directs a curious smile at her. “And yet you walked the High Road. Climbed every obstacle in your path. No wonder storms and sand and bullets haven’t halted your path before.”

She defensively raises one shoulder. “I did what I had to do. I couldn’t just turn around and quit.” When she looks up, Ulysses is looking into the distance, thoughtful.

“Don’t think you were always like this,” he muses. “Used to walk the High Road, hundreds of times, seemingly without fear, your head held high. Could have been nervous, but not scared.”

Lynn absentmindedly touches the scars on her temple. “A brain injury can do that to you. Make you more anxious than you were, more scared than you normally should be.”

A hand touches her own, then picks it up and curls around it, rough and warm. Lynn bursts into tears and buries her head in her knees. The only comfort she’s had for days has been ED-E’s clunky attempts at companionship, so this display of compassion overwhelms her.

The wind whistles around the two Couriers as they sit near the cliff’s edge. In silence only broken by Lynn’s diminishing sobs, they sit until the sun rises high over the Divide, until Lynn takes off her glasses and scrubs at her red eyes before putting her glasses back on, nodding at Ulysses, releasing his hand, standing, and walking away.

**Author's Note:**

> The Divide has some really great level design and use of vertical space, but as someone who's afraid of heights in real life, I know how terrifying some of the areas would be. It would really not be a fun time for someone with acrophobia, that's for sure!


End file.
